Washcloth/hand towel/soap. (Bar soap is better than liquid soad. Include a smaller zip bag just for the soap so the user can store the soap in the main zip bag after use.)

Undies/socks

Tampons

Stickers

Shampoo

Small notepad/pen

Wal-Mart gift card (If money allows. This is the ONLY time it's acceptable to purchase something from Wal-Mart.)

Pre-paid phone card (If money allows.)

Once the event hits and various organizations let it be known via news reports what it is they specifically need, do what you can. Sometimes that means a second round of donations, sometimes that means mailing the relief kits to an organization, sometimes that means going on a sock raid and mailing them off to an organization.

If there is no money available to do anything but the first round of donations, do that and feel no guilt.

09/07/2005

Is it the same guy who invented the concept that if you're a working mother your child is Doomed, and then launched a whole substrata of magazines and books to support this idea so as to continually scare the shoes off of women until they're driven back into America's kitchens?

My Sister Said:

"You know what would be great? The Leapfrog was destroyed. You know they just fought over that thing all day."

"Frogger? I didn't know that was still around. Arent' they a little young for that?"

"Leapfrog."

"Not to mention that you're letting them play videogames. Frogger is mild, granted, but you know it's like a gateway drug. Today, Frogger, tomorrow, Grand Theft Auto, day after that, knocking over a liquor store with his brother. Not that I'm judging or anything."

"LEAP (pause) FROG."

"Okay, what are YOU talking about?"

"LeapFROG!"

"I'M talking about Frogger. Game where you try to cross the street and not get your froggy run over by cars."

"That was a videogame? Really? Was it for children?"

"NO. It was NOT for children. All SORTS of people played it."

"Sounds like it was for children."

"It was NOT. I'll have you know it was cutting edge at the time."

"Was this back when they had Atari?"

"What EXACTLY are you implying?"

Eventually, I figure it out. Oh. My. God. Whatever happened to Highlights For Children? What the hell kind of kid's learning tool requires a storage systembigger than my Dayrunner and its own backpack??? What the hell kind of toy comes with AN ADVISORY BOARD???? I can't even figure out where to START. There's flat ones and book ones and dvd ones and ones with pens and fluffy inchworm ones and the one with the globe and the Spongebob one and Jesus fucking christ this has got to be some sort of goddamned scam designed to drain uncertain new parents of their confidence and money. This is supposed to be educational? To teach them to be creative? IT'S A SCAM.

"Just pick one."

"I can't handle the responsibility. What if I get the wrong one and they end up hating reading, fail to learn proper dramatic playand then blow their SATs? They'll end up hanging out on Crenshaw in front of the Krispy Kreme!!"

"Get the blue one. Theirs was blue, I think."

"THERE ARE 47 BLUE ONES, not counting the globe which is mostly blue because of the oceans."

"Is there one with animals? Theirs had animals."

"I have a cat. The primary decision I have to make in his life is do I clean his litter box now, or do I wait and do it tomorrow? Do you UNDERSTAND what I'm trying to say here? "

09/06/2005

For the record, I STILL say that if Comfort is freely offered, and you know Comfort is another form of Aid and Aid is something every American should step up and provide to each other In These Trying Times - especially if it's Comforting, to decline would be rude. This is not the time for rudeness.

09/05/2005

Back during the height of the extended deployments - and by 'height' I mean back when media outlets decided to make note of this briefly before deciding to never bring it up again - some attention was paid to the financial hardships of families of soldiers serving far away.

Unfortunately, all those stories are behind firewalls now and I can't get to them. The San Diego Union Tribune and the Press Enterprise were two standouts that I can recall right now. The Associated Press had few stories make the rounds as well, and NPR does an occasional story (though those tend to be more Fluff that Fact Tough). These were great, eye-opening stories. People tend to think military families have it easy, but this isn't quite true across the board. The pay isn't that great. Active duty families often stay in substandard, small housing on base because they can't afford rents in the surrounding neighborhoods. Military families move a lot. Military wives are discriminated against in the job market because the bosses know they might have to move. So they'll take a steady, shit paying job over a good paying job because that's what they can get. This means they often don't have an opportunity to build skill sets that would allow them to break this cycle in the job market. Reservists find themselves out of a job when on long deployment (this is not supposed to happen, but it does and it kind of makes sense; most employers in this country are small businesses and they can't afford to pay full salary and benefits for someone who isn't there for a year or two), or their or their own businessess suffer and shut down. I've kept an eye out for a study or something on the debt loads of military families, but haven't come across one. I bet that study wouldn't be pretty.

I can't find the stories from back then, but I found a couple still around:

It is common for military families to need assistance from food banks and charitable organizations to make it through the month, needing help with everything from rent to school clothes for the kids. They are paycheck to paycheck just like a lot of us, but their paychecks are smaller. Worse, there is a strong social stigma against the wives complaining about the tenuous state of their financial lives. They don't want their husbands to worry. They don't want to look unpatriotic. They don't want the other wives to look down on them. It's a complicated, fascinating and heartbreaking dynamic.

Our society's casual neglect of military families is high on the list of Things That Piss Me Off.

The Refugee views herself as extremely lucky. I'm paraphrasing here, but it comes down to she had somewhere to go, a way to get there and people to help out once she showed up on the doorstep soggy and loaded down with children. She's right.

But there are lots of military spouses who, due to the demands of the life, are not so lucky and cannot weather a crisis such as this. The affect on them can be devastating. The Gulf Coast has a substantial military population, with many of them living right in the middle of Katrina's primary strike zone.

Soldier's Angels is a 5013c non-profit that provides, among other things, direct support to military families in times of need. They are running a Katrina relief program. If you've already donated to the many excellent organizations trying to help in the blasted areas and you still feel the urge to do a little bit more, send them money or kits or gift cards from Wal-Mart/Home Depot/et. al. Your support will go directly toward helping an individual wife and her children get immediate relief in this catastrophe. For the Navy and Marines, there's the Navy-Marine Corps. Relief Society. It is also a private nonprofit, but it's also sponsored by the Navy. I admit that I don't quite understand how that part works..The Navy sponsors it, but all of the money comes from donations.

If the burden of your personal politics means you cannot under any circumstances support an overtly pro-military organization, don't click on either of those links. Instead, continue what you've already done, sending whatever donations you can to the other organizations working to provide support.

Meanwhile, Our Father The Hero, and his task force, and their equipment leave today for several weeks providing support and general Kick Assery in New Orleans.

"Are they gonna send some cops with you?""No.""'Cause, you know so far 200 cops in New Orleans just up and quit.""Where did you hear that?""The New York Times.""Huh.""Go back and ask them if you can borrow some cops. And maybe some of those dogs? The German Sheps. Labs are wusses. You're gonna need tough K-9s trained to view everyone as a potential food source.""I have to finish packing. Here's your sister."

We just blabbed about cookbooks, a topic we find thrilling but as others do not, I'm going to stop typing and get back to The Great Flower Election of 1894.

09/04/2005

Dolly in the Yard. Beautiful shot. For the record, this Cabbage Patch Doll belongs to no one in her household.

Backyard Rubble. Ding dong the dish is dead. YAAAAY!!!!

The Magic China Cabinet With Tree Limb. How the tree limb got into the house is a mystery. It's too big to have floated through the door. There is no hole in any of the walls. Frankly, I think the scary purple curtains had something to do with it. (This is funny only to people who have seen my curtains.)

Nearby Parking Lot.

Dorothy Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Yes. That is part of a HOUSE on top of part of an unrelated BUILDING.

09/03/2005

My Mother was right. (Four words I often have difficulty saying.) My sister's house is not one of the ones reduced to rubble. The many houses reduced to sticks? That was the work of the F-3 tornadoes that zipped through the neighborhood right after the hurricane. They didn't touch her house and a few others. The tornadoes cherry picked down the street. A couple of other houses also look untouched, until you walk around them and see the missing wall.

"Now I have a beach view home AND I'm a refugee!"

"You should call the U.N.! Maybe they'll send you some forms to fill out to get a free T-shirt."

"What would I do with a T-shirt from the U.N.?"

"Put it on eBay!"

She sounds exhausted, but not haggard. That sound thrills me.

Her house is a two story. Out front, somebody else's door was in the front yard, and the cars were flipped, piled against the side of the house. The Camero (or whatever it was) the brother in law was restoring was also moved far from its original position, but it had not a scratch on it. Out back the shed was rubble and the sattellite dish had relocated from the house to on top of the pile that used to be a shed. Trees down all over the place.

Inside, the surge flooded out the first floor and it looks like the water got to waist and chest high. The furniture was all shoved to the back of the room, the refrigerator askew. But the stuff inside the china cabinet was unbroken, even though the doors were wide open. The frames for her dining room and end tables were piled in a jumble, but there was no sign of the glass that was in them. That glass dining room table is huge and heavy. It fell on her once (don't ask) and she had to get a hefty neighbor to move it off of her. Weird that the dining room table has vanished, presumably smashed into little pieces that washed away, while the girly glasses in the china cabinet were unharmed.

Everything on the second floor was untouched. The dust that was there before she left was still there when she got back.

What got my sister walking around the house was knowing where they would have been had she not finally got up and left town. Most of the everyday living goes on downstairs, especially during a storm. The kids don't like storms, so they all pile in the living room or in the nephews' room to wait it out. The nephews have their room is downstairs, and the baby's playpen is right next to the front door in the living room. They all would have been downstairs when the waves came through.

"As fast as that water was moving, I wouldn't have gotten to them all," the Refugee said. "We would have died."

Neighbors told her how fast the water roiled through the neighborhood. They told her the surge slammed through like a train; no one could believe how fast it was moving, even the old timers who have gone through hurricanes before. One woman across the street swam out of a window to get to out of the house because the water moved so fast she couldn't get to the stairs. Bodies swirled past her in the waves.

The retired military guy across the street lives in a one story house which was completely flooded and then hit by the tornadoes. He had made himself a makeshift camp in the yard, which is where he was when the Refugee and our father drove up the street. He was so sweet, she said. He went right up to her, looking worried and said "honey, you need to brace yourself."

"He's sleeping in the dirt and and he's worried about me."

"Old Southern men are different," I told her.

My sister told him to move into her house and make himself comfortable on the second floor. She actually had to talk him into it. HE DIDN'T WANT TO IMPOSE.

"I don't know why he didn't just go ahead and do it already," the Refugee said. "He'd been outside ever since the thing happened."

"That's an old school Southern thing. I can't believe you've been down there for so long and you still don't get that. I told you to get off base more. Why don't you ever go off base? I mean, I still can't believe you were in Bosnia and never went off base unless you had to guard something."

"It was cold."

"What about Manilla? Until that plane went down and you guys had to go build the rescue ramp thingie, you never went off base."

"I TOLD you I went to that McDonalds."

"That does not COUNT."

"ANYway," and I could hear the Refugee rolling her eyes, "I would have just gone on and moved in."

"That's because you're from Cleveland."

She grabbed some clothes, important papers, and found pictures of the eldest nephew at the now Gone day care center at First Baptist. Those pictures are really going to help his heart. He's been so upset since learning that his day care center was destroyed.

But that girl also got a whole bunch of DVDs. And the brother in law asked her to get the second floor television, too! AND SHE DID IT.

"Are you SERIOUS?"

"These are my dvds! I need them."

"You can get dvds ANYWHERE. I can't believe you took time to get the dvds."

"These are from my COLLECTION. Shut up."

"Mom and Dad have that ubertelevision downstairs, and little televisions in every single room upstairs. And like, if you turn off one of them, they ask you what's wrong. What are you going to do with ANOTHER television?"

"Shut UP. He wanted the television for when we move."

"What kind of movies are we talking about?"

"His kung fu movies."

"Oh! Okay then."

"I hate them, though. I should have let those drown."

"I cannot BELIEVE you would be so selfish as to deny the man solace by not rescuing a few of his kung fu movies."

Anyways, she also managed to save some of the CDs she recorded. My sister is a singer. She has a really nice voice and people always ask her to sing, especially in church (which she goes to and I do not). She's not the only singer in the family; one of our cousins cut an album in Nashville not too long ago. She's also on tour as a backup singer with an Up With People-style religious group. Her cookbooks "you know these are sacred to me" were soaked and battered, but she took some of them in hopes that she can figure out a way to repair them.

Getting into town was difficult due to the damage to and on the roads, and the closer they got to the affected region, the larger the heartbreak. Scraggly people everywhere, looking exhausted and beat. It was pretty obvious that relief efforts were scant. Houses in the middle of the street, piles where houses used to be, cars jumbled in a parking lot as if they had been swept into a pile with a broom. On one road a car was up ended as if a pile driver had shoved it into the ground. The destruction was enormous and really hard for her to take in.

While in Memphis, my sister suggested to Our Father that they stop to get gas. He didn't want to, thinking that it would be better to get some when they got closer. But by the time they hit Jackson, the lines were LITERALLY miles long at every exit they hit.

"He kept saying let's just try one more exit. I was like, oookay."

They ended up backtracking sixty miles for gas and rolled into the station on fumes. They wanted to get gas for the return trip but no one had those plastic gas cans. Eventually a woman at one of the stops gave them a whole bunch of empty small plastic bottles that antifreeze comes in, and they filled those up with a total of about 10 gallons and put them in the back seat. They had to drive with the windows down. (In additon to being church going people, they don't smoke. Which is why they could drive with a car full of gasoline in tiny bottles without fear that the car would blow up.)

"I did NOT want to spend the night on the side of the road in Mississippi," the Refugee said. "I've seen too many movies like that and none of them have a happy ending."

Once again I pointed out to the girl that if she had weaponry, this would not be a problem. I only know how to use and strip down a shotgun, a Baretta and a Glock. And though I had a glorious time bonding with a Ruger Mini-14 fully automatic assault rifle with a collapsible stock and a night scope (matte black, BABY), that was a one time thing because the STAT team never let me play with it again. What I'm saying is my gun knowledge is self-taught. She has been trained by PROFESSIONALS. Both of them have! She knows how to use firepower I can only read about and drool. Why they don't see the benefit in getting some steel is BEYOND me. This is JUST the sort of situation --

"Are you done?" Sometimes I suspect that I get on my sister's nerves. But as I am First Born, there's very little she can do about it.

They also waited in line for that gas, though the line wasn't as bad as the ones they passed. Because Our Father is pretty much the most honorable man we know, he did not do what the two of us thought would be the obvious thing - get out of the car, tell the police officers Who He Is, flash those credentials and go to the front of the line.

"I was like, tell them you're on reconaissance or something!"

It's kind of embarassing how we suck in comparison to him.

On their way out of town they gave a case of water and some food to the neighbor whom she ordered to move into her house, and they gave the remaining gasoline to a friend who by some miracle had a working vehicle, but no money for gas. It was killing both of them not to be able to do more for everybody they saw. On the return trip they did decide not to stay in their motel room for longer than a couple of hours nap because the lobby was filled with people who had lost everything and had managed to get out. They wanted to free up the room for use by somebody who needed it. And happily, this motel wasn't doing the gouging thing, like some of the places were. Some of the motels are actually being decent; the managers aren't immediately charging the displaced.

Through the local blackvine, my sister learned that all of her friends she was so worried about were accounted for. Miss Sandy is alive, but they didn't have a chance to find and see her.

One thing they were pleased to see. There were convoys of good old boys in trucks with boats hitched on the back heading down into the zone. So, even if it's taking the feds a while, everyday people are heading down to do what they can. Later in the trip they did see a military convoy. That was good to see, too. But there was just the one, and it wasn't very big.

Meanwhile, the brother in law was in Okinawa wigged out with worry, hoping they'll let him go home for a while and waiting for the typhoon that was heading toward southern Japan way to hit. This was on Friday, which was the last time she talked to him. I zipped over to Google News (I talked to her on Saturday night) and see that typhoon Nabi is expected to hit there on Monday. I also happened to notice a story about a different typhoon, Talim, where authorities in China managed to evacuate over 700,000 people to safety before that one hit on August 31. And then I just got pissed off again and stopped reading those stories.

Anyways, the brother in law is on the disaster recovery team. So once Typhoon Nabi - which according to the news stories is right now (Saturday night) the equivalent of a Category 5 - hits Japan, he will be sent out to help save people.

"It's kind of bad that you're doing disaster recovery in another country when your home is a disaster," the Refugee said.

The pain in her voice made me want to cry again. But as the chocolate cupcakes are still in the oven, I'm trying to hold off. Also, I'm out of chips so if I start crying again I'll have to get dressed and go to the store.

So. There's lots of stuff still to do. The house is still standing and she rescued some clothes, dvds and a TELEVISION, but everything else the family had is gone. She has to figure out day care for two of the kids and starting school for one of them. Then there's her own schooling; she had started college down there in Mississippi. I've heard that colleges are letting refugees transfer for free or very reduced cost; to feel less useless I am going to be all over the internet(s) and telephone trying to find a school near my parent's home to do that for her. I mean the girl is a veteran with three kids and a husband overseas and tough enough to hold down a family and carve out space for her own education. Somebody somewhere has got to let her in, and they damn well better have decent day care. There's paperwork and the occasional wig out caused from the delayed shock, which hits her in waves. And the big conversation with the nephews, who have been shielded from a lot. Then there's the matter of moving into the home of the Parental Units for many months until the brother in law's current deployment ends. This isn't even close to being over. But she sounds so much better than she has in days.

"In the car I started to tear up, not just because I was sad, but because I felt blessed," the Refugee said. "We are alive. We lost things, but we are alive. I don't know what all is going to happen with anything else, but we're alive."

09/02/2005

For one, it gives me a headache. For two, it makes me consume mass quantities of chocolate and BBQ potato chips, putting all of the work I've done to get these thighs into shape in severe jeopardy.

Anyways, this is my sister's block. At the top, where it curves to the right and goes down to intersect with another road, that pile o' nothing to the right of the intersection was where she lived.

LATER UPDATE: Okay, this is her block. But Mom thinks the Refugee's house is the one right NEXT to the pile of nothing. Which would be far better because that house at least still looks like a house. As in, it has a roof and all. But you can't tell from above what the rest of the damage is, so we don't know if a wall is missing or something. We do know that the surge got to about four or five feet. So that means anything on the first floor is gone. But if the rest of the structural damage wasn't to bad, maybe stuff on the second floor is okay. Unless there's a wall missing or something. Because cell phone reception is nil, we're not going to hear back from them until they leave the area.

Mom: "Can you send me another picture, but from street level?"Me: "Um, no."Mom: "Why not? Just make another one."Me: "I didn't make this. Somebody else did and told me where to go to download it."Mom: "Ask them to make another one from the street."Me: "Ma, this picture was taken in SPACE. I don't think they can take street level pictures from space."Mom: "Did you ask?"Me: *sigh*

Meanwhile, word is Hancock County is even worse than Harrison County. Harrison County is where Gulfport is located. Hancock is further up, where Bay St. Louis and Waveland are, and also some beautiful Cypress swamps. There aren't reports coming out of Hancock County because nobody has been able to get in there, and also what scant resources there are are primarily going into New Orleans, which is a nice big fat Fuck You to the people in the rural areas. Those poor people have been absolutely stranded for days - no buses or blackhawk helicopters or anything at all coming for them. From what I can tell, they're not even getting relief drops!!! The Sun Herald (Harrison) has been able to continue its news site, but the Sea Coast Echo (Hancock) has not. One of the television helicopters flew over yesterday, but you couldn't tell much from the clip save miles and miles of places blasted away.

So the USA Natural Disaster Lesson Here Is:

Try to be in an urban center, because the disaster agencies and media outlets will first care about and act on behalf of the urban centers.

Try to be middle class or above, with resources.

If you can't be middle class or above, try to have some form of working transportation and an emergency stash of cash for gas.

It would be helpful not to be a minority.

If you lucked out and are not a minority, it would be helpful to not be poor and living in the sticks.

However, none of the above applies if you live in SoCal, because when the big one hits everyone from the Hills to Compton will be washed out to sea, leaving nothing but Surf Nazis and a new coastline in rememberance of your time in this liquefaction zone.

I probably wouldn't be so upset about this had I not spent my adult formative years living in cow country. But when you see that rural people are already a bare smudge on the radar when everything's normal, and you see by all the evidence that they don't even REGISTER when a deadly crisis hits? Pisses me off. I feel for those trapped in the devolving situation in New Orleans, but at least they're getting SOMETHING. Nobody gives a fuck about the people in the country.

Thank you to all of the people in the Google Earth forums who figured out how to get this image. Also thank you ever so much to HWSNBN for listening to me ramble about this and everything else last night.

And that will probably be it for Katrina coverage around here for a while. Having just read THE MOST IDIOTIC POST IN THE WORLD about this topic on a list thingie, and as I am THIS CLOSE to flinging the iBook against the wall, I think this is the safest approach.

Turns out some natural disaters, like all politics, are Personal.

Well, I'll probably come back to it once My Sister The Refugee Veteran and My Dad The Certified Hero Who Has A Day Named After Him And Everything return from their trip to the blasted lands. They left a few hours ago. And yes, they will get through. I know these people.

All right ... it is also very likely that the topic will come up again if I decide to break out with the New Orleans Police Department thoughts, which I probably won't because I know that other people are Mulling similar things and when they're ready to roll (not that I'm calling anybody OUT or anything PERISH the thought) it's going to be worth it, not to mention 20 times better than what I would have put together. (I reserve the right to Categorically Deny said naked and unsolicited compliment should need, or Rampant Ego demand it down the road. Not that I'm talking to anyone in PARTICULAR, mind you. )

There's also this vague niggle in my head feeling ghosts of connections between this coverage and that of the crack v. powdered cocaine disparity. But it's been so long since I was in that mix, I know I can't get my head around it without a dive through the files. Which I don't have time for right now...

So! Back to All About Me. Or maybe South Africa. I haven't decided, yet. Just read this thing about that photog who took the picture with the girl he (probably) let die.

I'm reading Ben Hur. Did you know that book first came out in the 1830s? I didn't.